250 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY 



fit to eat.' When they are stuffed with bacon and well 

 larded they are as good as a swan. In olden times they 

 were eaten by royalty, and why not by common folk now? 



" If any one who is a preserver of fish can say a word in 

 favour of the heron, now is his time to speak, for many are 

 being shot. I should as soon think of preserving rats or 

 sparrows, as I am not aware that herons do any good, and 

 they certainly deprive the quiet angler of no end of sport, 

 and sometimes of a good dinner." 



I replied to these rather extravagant epistles to the effect 

 that " I know the wary old hernshaw well . . . and have 

 often watched him adroitly catching shore-crabs, young eels, 

 and small flounders, or any such little fry as comes to hand. 

 Most of the fish he devours are the valueless fry of our more 

 despised fishes. Who eats bream, roach, perch, and such 

 coarse fish ? Certainly not the anglers, who themselves haul 

 out tons yearly to rot and feed the flies and rats upon our 

 river and broad sides, thinking, wisely too, that they are not 

 worth the carrying home. On the other hand, he weeds out, 

 and possibly prevents overcrowding. I will grant the heron 

 may be a bit of a nuisance in the neighbourhood of a trout 

 stream, but on the whole he is a fellow whom I should be 

 sorry to see exterminated." 



The correspondence rounded up with an editorial com- 

 ment : 



" The hero of the herons has found his champion. ' S. S. G.' 

 congratulates him on his marvellous feat of destroying four 

 herons in two shots. The virtue of the deed lies in the fact 

 that ' herons are detrimental to sport and consume tons of 

 human food daily.' One would like to ask what detriment 

 herons are to sport ? Do they so diminish the fish that the 

 angler has to pass weary hours of disappointment instead of 

 hilarious excitement at the capture of his scaly victims ? 

 When I read of the doings of the hundred and one angling 

 clubs in the city [Norwich], I can but demur to the statement 

 that sport is injured. As to the ' consumption of human 

 food,' does the correspondent mean the fresh-water fish which 

 the herons get from dykes and streams? If so, I would like 

 to ask how many tons of so-called ' human food ' do the 

 anglers destroy in the course of a season ? Herons were 

 formerly preserved for the sport of falconry. They have now 

 so diminished that their wanton destruction is little less than 

 a crime." 



